By buffs I of course mean giving them a tanking and healing tree. Frost seems like a good choice for tanking, particularly after they screwed up and made blood the DK tanking tree. BLOOD IS STUPID! Fact. Fire has a cauterization theme going for it, but I doubt that would get past committee.

While we're suggesting ideas, why not an acupuncture tree for rogues? Maybe a "shadow healing" tree for priests? I'm just saying, priest sounds like a healing class, so maybe it needs more healing options. But if I really had to pick, I'd go with arcane. It just feels right. Frost and ice are hard and slow enemies, fire blows shit up, and arcane manipulates things. For example, Slow could slow down the rate at which you die. Arcane Blast would be an excellent quick heal. Arcane Missiles are really just Penance with a different shininess.

This is obviously a pretty major change to a class that has been around, and been more or less what is currently is, for a long time. And it would create all sorts of problems such as figuring out how to make a cloth tank without needing a whole new brand of itemization. Maybe spirit could give armor, thereby ensuring that the tanks get into fights with the healers for gear, which is something WoW has been lacking ever since paladins stopped using spell power swords.

6
comments:

If they hadn't already given the bubble niche to Disc priests, I'd suggest a mana-shield based healing tree for mages. Warlocks could get a life-drain-based healing approach like Rift Chloromancers. Rogues get an evasion tanking spec (or do DK's still have this niche?) and I guess you buff up BM Hunters with Tenacity pets.

Ideal? No. Better than having four classes that have no flexibility because they were created in an era where being hybrid meant doing a mediocre job healing? Talking heads differ.

I loved spellpower swords for paladins, and was really sad to lose them in Wotlk. :(

As for mage tanking, you can have spirit-link-like damage sharing with water elemental for damage reduction, as well as reduction shields. Or perhaps go full elemental transformation, like Twilight Ascendants.

@Green Armadillo: Maybe mages could be reflective healers, meaning that they can, for example, cast their own sort of spell reflect on tanks, reflecting back X amount of damage. Or as actual healing, they could absorb damage for X seconds and then return that to the tank, as healing.

@Shalcker: I'd hope to keep them someone like they are now, in terms of being pure casters, but with some tweaks to give one tree the durability, and reduced damage output, to act as tanks.